Je ne suis pas lui

The best two hours I've ever spent watching a movie. This was my first modern Turkish feature film I've seen. "Modern" being the age of smartphones and social media.

The movie is a story of circumstance and opportunity. The main protagonist is the center of the film and his acting in my belief deserves an award, along with the director. The film follows a man who is apparently fed up with his routine and mundane existence. An opportunity presents him when his co-worker, a married woman whose husband is serving a seven year jail term for forgery, invites him to her house for a meal.

Soon these two are caught up in a bizarre relationship - if you can call it a relationship. The rest of the movie deals with all the subsequent events that follow from this relationship.

Plot: Ercan Kesal plays the role of Nihat, a man works in a kitchen in Istanbul. He is invited by Ayse(Maryam Zaree) a recent employee who works as a dishwasher to her house for a meal. There he spies Ayse's marriage and is amazed at the similarity between himself and her husband. Nihat soon moves in with Ayse and soon starts to adopt a strange behavior of copying Ayse's husband who is serving seven years in jail for forgery.

A very good movie. A sublime viewing for me. This movie can be classified as a situational drama film and not a thriller.

I saw this film at the Rotterdam film festival (IFFR) 2014. In a nutshell: too many statistically impossible coincidences, and too slow developments overall. The plot is interesting, and is worked out proficiently in the first half, where the pace is bearable while there is some steady progress all along.

In the second half, I felt that there were too many coincidences, most of them unnecessary and also not used as effectively as could have been. To avoid spoilers, I refrain from providing examples. Nevertheless, not boring overall, and several unexpected events make it a moderately good watch. Everyone's personal motives, why they do what they do, are not evident and certainly not compelling, so I don't think this film qualifies as a drama. The main character does not grow in his role that has befallen him, and thus missed many potential dramatic avenues that could have made this film much more interesting.